Microtonal Playing on a Saxophone

The saxophone is capable of bending between semitones, enabling musicians to bring new colors and vocal effects into their playing with microtones. Saxophonist Ole Mathisen shows you how you can practice with microtones.
Learn more at the Jazz Academy: academy.jazz.org
Ole Mathisen - Tenor saxophone
Eric Suquet - Director
Bill Thomas - Director of Photography
Aaron Chandler - Sound Engineer
Richard Emery - Production Assistant
Seton Hawkins - Producer
Recorded September 18, 2014

[@jdhalligan]

Philipp Gerschlauer has made a 128 note to the octave microtonal scale

[@olemathisen6018]

My new group fully incorporates microtonal playing in both the written and improvised material, and our new album can be found here: www.olemathisen.com/floating_points_album/

[@shemarcollier3457]

I can't I was fighting sounds like this on bass clarinet I know its a different instrument but foggy notes where the death of me

[@nandocordeiro5853]

What you said makes no sense, but yes, I agree.

[@siddheshdeshpande7183]

100:125:150 is the ratio useful to derive microtones in an octave. According to my studies every note has it's region on a string however the notes are to be played only at the tips which are the actual notes. Hence each note would generate 2 notes. But there's a catch, the position of the perfect fifth is fixed ie 1.5 times the root note. Hence total no. of microtones is 10*2=20 + root+fifth= 22

[@johnsontrimble7881]

Not even close buddy

[@leobird8756]

The challenge of microtonal music is not the fingerings…it is in making microtonal music sound BETTER than your playing WITHOUT microtones. So far I have still not heard anyone be able to do this effectively. I will be sticking to my 12 notes

[@mikhailvarenov]

Hayden Chisholm does it quite effectively